Medical Transcription - Work From Home Opportunity

Medical transcription can be a great career option for women who wish to work from home, and have a basic knowledge in the field of medicine. A good level of computer knowledge, and ease with international accents can help you progress in the profession while giving you the comfort of working from home.

Many a times, a woman needs to take breaks in her career, to play various other roles in life, those of a wife, a mother, a nurturer. Such women may look at the profession of a medical transcriptionist as they return to the work force. Sometimes women, who have husbands on transferable jobs, can also look at medical writing or medical transcriptions as a career option, as all one needs is a good internet connection and one can work wherever their families travel to.

In today’s times, with the age of digitalization opening up, people halfway across the world can use the advantage of the time zone difference to work for companies, or professionals based elsewhere for administrative jobs, and earn a fair amount of money.

So, here is another thought on how you can make a career out of your own house. Sindhu Narayan works from home as a medical transcription specialist, and gets time to efficiently undertake her household chores and balance her work as well.

In this interview, Sindhu speaks to Paroma Sen-Basu about the lucrative work from home option of Medical Transcriptions.

Tell us about yourself, what are your educational qualifications and how did you get into writing medical transcriptions from home? What exactly is the field all about?

I am a happily married mother of an eight year old. I am a Computer Science graduate with a passion for medicine. This is what brought me into the field of medical transcription 13 years ago.

Medical Transcription is basically a process, which documents medical reports for American doctors. The report is dictated by doctors into a Dictaphone by the doctor/nurse/physician assistant, and it is uploaded to a server by the doctor (most of the time, at the end of their day). Since India and other countries, such as US, have a time difference, there is a high demand for Indian medical transcription writers who can write the reports during their day, while the doctors in US are catching up on their sleep. When the doctors get back to their hospitals/clinics the next day, the reports they dictated the previous day are ready for them.

The dictations are audio (wav files). We as medical transcript writers have to listen to them, and make reports on the required templates and letterheads of these doctors. The audio basically contains all the information about a patients’ visit or surgery, etc, from the moment the patient steps into a doctor’s clinic or hospital room, until he walks out.

The reports cater to every field of medicine from neurology, obstetrics-gynaecology, dermatology, oncology, paediatrics, pulmonary, nephrology, etc.

What specific training or formal qualification is required to get into this field?

One needs to be trained in basic medicine. The general structure of the human body, normal functioning, what can go wrong, how to correct what goes wrong, the names of common drug, the drug dosages, etc. This knowledge helps to understand better what a doctor is saying when you are writing the report.

Since we deal more with American doctors or those of various other nationalities, getting used to their accent is the biggest challenge.

Also, one needs to be trained in typing and needs to have a good typing speed, this helps increase productivity too.

Lastly, a basic knowledge of American English is a must, since the English language in America is different from Indian English.

What other kinds of jobs in similar fields can be done with the same qualifications?

Another similar job is legal transcription, one would need to listen to the oral dictation of a lawyer and make reports on the lawyer’s letterheads accordingly. A basic knowledge in law would ideally be required. Like medical transcription, legal transcription is also quite popular in India. Several international lawyers require Indian transcript writers to fill out reports.

What is your normal day like, how many hours do you have to put in? Do you have to work every day of the week?

I start my day at 7 am and my shift gets over at 3 pm. I work about 10 hrs a day. I have a target to meet and once I meet my target, I can logoff for the day. I work 6 days a week.

Do you work for a single medical company or several of them, since the job is from home?

I work for a Bangalore based company full-time. But there are a lot of options for anyone doing medical transcription. You can work full-time or part-time as you wish.

Thank you Sindhu on the insightful information, this will definitely come in handy for most of us women out there who always welcome innovative ideas on how to work from home. We wish you the best!